Hugh was born in Croydon, the younger son of William Frederick Snell and his second wife. Olive Robinson. W.F. Snell’s first wife died in 1889 leaving him with a three-year-old son, William Ashley Futvoye Snell. In 1917, at the age of sixty-seven, he married the thirty-four-year-old Olive. He had known her for many years – she was staying with his mother and himself in 1901. They had a daughter, Barbara Riccia in 1920. He died on 5 May 1931 at Fyfield, Mark Way, Godalming leaving £2,377-5-1

Hugh followed his brother to Harrow and Matriculated in 1941. He was up at Christ Church for a year.

He was a cadet at Sandhurst in 1942 and was gazetted to the Scots Guards on 29 January 1943 [His half-brother had served in the same regiment in WW1. He died in 1965.]

Plaque commemorating the death of Hugh M Snell, the first to fall in the Allied liberation of the cityIn 1997, a plaque, written in Italian and English, was placed on the corner of via Wolf and Lungarno Serristori, Florence. It recalls the night of August 3rd / 4th 1944, when Lt. Hugh M. Snell was mortally wounded, there, in a fight with the Germans. He was part of a reconnaissance patrol of British and Italian soldiers, who had penetrated into the part of Florence which was still under German control. A remembrance ceremony is held every August.

He is buried in the Florence War Cemetery Plot II. E. 18.

Image: The plaque on Via Wolf recalls the death of Hugh M. Snell, the first to fall in the Allied liberation of the city.